A Mystery for
Ghost Hunters!
Today we welcome cozy-mystery author Teresa Trent from Texas! Teresa is the author of the Pecan Bayou Series and weaver of ghost tales. Welcome Teresa!
The Book
A Mystery for
Ghost Hunters!
When Betsy's
Aunt Maggie wants to drag her along on a ghost hunting excursion at the local
abandoned tuberculosis hospital she isn't sure if she quite believes in ghosts.
When she comes upon a fresh spirit in the form of a body, she starts to rethink
about what really is haunting the hospital.
Betsy must
solve the murder in spite of her father, who is a lieutenant on the Pecan Bayou
Police Force, town citizens worried about the effect of the occult on their
children, and handsome stranger from Dallas. How do you get blood out of a silk
blouse? Betsy Livingston can tell you in her newspaper column, "The Happy
Hinter". When she's not writing, or taking care of her young son, she's
busy solving mysteries in the tiny Texas town of Pecan Bayou.
Get your copy today!
There's a Giveaway!
Comment for a chance to win an eBook copy of A Dash of Murder!
From the Author . . .
I am an indie author and a preschool
teacher. I have lived in Texas for the
last 17 years and aside from a hurricane here and there, have really enjoyed
it. I also write picture book
curriculums for preschoolers-a very different writing job!
Did you plan to be a writer or did it just
happen?
I think it just happened. I started writing in my twenties and it was
one of many hobbies I would pick up and go back to year after year. Sometimes I wrote for fun and sometimes I
wrote to work through something going on in my life. All of the writing, while sometimes exhausting,
created a peace in me.
When did you decide to take that step that
made you a published author?
I had a birthday and decided if I was ever
going to write that book now was the time.
I had never been able to finish a book and had my share of rejection
slips on the writing I had finished. I
decided to go about writing in a different way and started trying to read
something every day that would help me improve my craft. Once I committed to writing daily and learning
about writing daily every thing became much easier for me.
What has been your greatest challenge as a
writer? Have you been able to overcome it?
My writing was typical in that I would have
a story to tell and be excited about telling it and then get to the middle of
that story and find I had nowhere to go.
I lost the flow of the story and
with that the excitement of telling it.
I did overcome this by finding out a couple of things about myself. First of all, of the two types of writers
(outliners and seats-of-the-pants writers) I am an outliner. That being said, I am a flexible
outliner. Just because I decide a certain thing has to happen at a
certain part of the story doesn't mean it can't be moved elsewhere. Once I allowed myself the freedom to “pants”
a little in an organized way I could keep my momentum and my joy in telling a
story.
Is writing a full-time career for you? If
not, how else do you spend your work day?
I wish it was, but no, I don't write full
time. I have a child with a disability
and found working full-time outside my home was tough on both of us, so I have
worked part-time teaching as well as keeping up with my writing.
What inspired the idea behind your book?
When my daughter was in middle school we
would set aside every Wednesday night and watch all of those ghost hunting
shows on cable. We loved it when they
used the gadgets and walked around in the dark. Funny, but most of the time the
ghost hunters really didn't find too much.
From that I thought about what it would be like to actually be on a
ghost hunting paranormal investigation and all of the murderous things that
could happen.
What is your favorite scene?
Going down the “dead tunnel” of course.
What kind of research was involved for the book?
I read up on several abandoned tuberculosis
hospitals. I was hoping I was accurate
and felt pretty good about it when one of my aunts told me she went to a
hospital as a child back in the thirties that was like the one I described. A
woman jumped out and grabbed her and my grandmother had to pull her away. When my aunt read my book she said my
description was correct on and it really gave her the creeps.
What kind of research was involved for the
series? Did you find it became easier with each book?
This
series takes place in the small town of Pecan Bayou TX. Before you go looking for it on a map you
will find a Pecan Bayou but it is just that, a bayou. My husband and I enjoyed visiting small towns
in Texas. From these experiences, I
started building the characters and even the individual streets in the
town. I also am a very visual writer so
when I write a scene, I will often find a picture of characters, props,
buildings and anything else I want to focus on for a scene. It was much easier writing the second book in
the series because I didn't have to stop and invent so much.
Do you have plans
for a new book?
Yes! A Dash of Murder was my first book and I am
promoting it during October because it takes place on Halloween. Since then, I have written Overdue for Murder
, a story that centers around writers doing a book talk and features lots and
lots of cupcakes. At this time I am
working on my third book that will take place over the Fourth of July. I can't say much about it yet, but Betsy and
all the characters come back and take a “slice” out of the incredibly high
crime rate in this tiny town.
What do you have in store next for your
readers?
I would like to
continue writing about Pecan Bayou and finish the series at six books. There are some story arcs that are slowly
developing from book to book that I plan to finish.
What has been your greatest pleasure or
personal success as an author?
Anytime someone comes back to me and tells
me they liked a certain scene or a character or they enjoyed trying to figure
out “who dunnit” I'm so pleased!
What is the best piece of writing advice
you’ve received?
Write every day. For many years I would write for a while and
then put it down. I would go back weeks
or months later and have no idea what I was trying to accomplish. Writing is a lot like teaching. You have to establish a flow of thought for
it to work.
Which authors and books have most
influenced your writing style?
Probably Dianne Mott Davidson and a little
Stephen King. I guess from both authors
I loved their gifts of creating characters.
These are people you know, but not really. I have tried to create characters like that
and am still learning. I was pleased the
other day when a friend and reader asked me if one of my villains was really
somebody we knew. It wasn't!
Laptop,
desktop or notebook and pen for writing?
I
use a laptop, a comfortable chair and a small dog for my feet. I also have to be no more than twenty feet
from the refrigerator.
Enjoy an Excerpt!
“Watch
out, Betsy, some of these old floorboards may be treacherous.” I followed Aunt
Maggie through the rooms full of cracked plaster, floor debris and the
ever-present graffiti sprayed on the walls of the former tuberculosis hospital.
Aunt Maggie was
a tiny woman at four-foot-eight, and the world often towered above her. Her
height was the only part of her that was small. She had the strongest will and
the biggest heart in Texas.
“This is going
to be great when we film here on Halloween, the scariest night of the year. I’m
so glad you decided to help us out and took a few hours away from your
tip-writin’ column. The Pecan Bayou Texas Paranormal Society thanks you, and if
we find a ghost – boy howdy – I thank you.”
“Well, I can
spare a few hours here and there.”
“So, what are
you writin’ about now? “
“Um, I’m
working on my pre-Thanksgiving columns. Hey, I have a question for you. What
would you say is the best way to get red wine out of a tablecloth?”
“You know, Aunt
Ida had an unusual way of doing that.”
“You mean the
one that used to bring the chocolate pecan pie when she came to Thanksgiving?”
I had not seen Great Aunt Ida much since she moved to the retirement center
near Austin.
“That’s the
one. She used to put her tablecloth over a bowl with the wine stain in the
middle of it. Then she would pour salt on the stain, and then pour boiling water over into the bowl. Darnedest thing. Took it right out.” Maggie said.
middle of it. Then she would pour salt on the stain, and then pour boiling water over into the bowl. Darnedest thing. Took it right out.” Maggie said.
For our
other-worldly walk-through today, Aunt Maggie dressed for the occasion with a
black cap on her head adorned with glow-in-the-dark letters that read
“Paranormal Investigator.”
“You like it?”
she asked, noticing my gaze. “I ordered one for everyone on the crew and a few
extras. I thought we ought to look official, bein’ on TV and all.” My aunt’s
honey-colored bouffant hairdo was all crammed up in the cap with sprayed curls
poking out in places.
“Can’t wait to
wear mine.” I was not someone who looked terrific in a ball cap. At least that
was what Barry had said. Funny how after all these years I still felt rejected
by him.
Maggie crunched
around on the fallen trash in the main hallway. As we came to the end of the
hallway, her voice lowered slightly. “This up here was what they called the
‘dead tunnel.’ I saw it in the blueprints Howard had.” Howard was the head of
Aunt Maggie’s paranormal group. Even though sometimes he looked like a person
mental health officials might be interested in observing, he was extremely
intelligent and had a doctorate in paranormal psychology. I didn’t even know a
person could get a degree in ghost hunting, but Howard had achieved this
greatness.
Maggie
continued her story. “It was the tunnel they used to wheel the bodies to the
morgue. That way the patients wouldn’t see someone had died.” I never was one
to get too frightened by horror movies, but coming into this part of the
hospital certainly had me qualifying for an official case of the
heebie-jeebies. The dead tunnel was windowless and grimy, and I felt as if we
were walking into a mineshaft, not a morgue.
“So here we are.” Aunt Maggie’s voice took on
a softer tone as if we had just entered a funeral home. “Looks a little longer
than it did in the blueprints.”
We stepped
gingerly through the open door with a sign hanging askew that read, “Hospital
Personnel Only: No One Beyond This Point.”
Unless you’re
dead, I thought. Then you are welcome to come on in and sit a spell.
“Aunt Maggie,
we can still go get Howard. He’s roaming around somewhere here.”
“What are we?
Chickens? We can do this, Betsy.” With that, she shined her red plastic
heavy-duty flashlight down the tunnel. The tunnel seemed to go on and on,
leading into absolute darkness. A million things could be down that hall. They
could have stuffed it all with furniture or antiquated medical equipment that
we would banging into at any moment, and that was my rational expectation. I
wasn’t even acknowledging my irrational side. My aunt’s calling me a chicken
did not quite raise my confidence and charge me up about getting down the dead
tunnel.
I nodded my
head dully in agreement as my eyes tried to lock onto anything solid in the
dark.
“You’re making
fun of me, I know, but it is true, Betsy. I sense something here. I just hope
we can get this on tape when we have a thermal energy camera pointed at it.”
According to Howard, a thermal energy camera would capture cold and hot spots
that the human eye couldn’t see. We stepped forward, our footfalls now echoing
against the chilled stone.
As Maggie
spoke, I felt a cold breeze hit me. I clenched my bare arms as I felt goose
bumps raise up on my skin. It seemed as if we had phantom air conditioning in
this part of the hospital. Down at the end of the blackness I could hear a
faint, high, chirping, clicking sound. Somehow I hadn’t imagined a ghost
clicking at me. Maybe there were some tap-dancing spirits floating around.
“It has
arrived,” Maggie whispered.
“No,” I said
trying to squelch the shake that had come into my voice. “A … draft has
arrived, that’s all.”
“Think what you
want, my dear.”
She angled the
wavering beam of light into the black recesses of the tunnel. From the other
end of the tunnel, I could hear a distinct rustling sound as something headed
our way.
“The apparition
is coming near us,” Maggie sounded delighted.
“What should we
do, Aunt Maggie?” I asked, the volume of my voice rising as the rustling became
an increasing cacophony of noise.
Maggie looked
down the passage and then yelled, “HOLD YOUR GROUND!” She stood with her hands
placed firmly on her rounded hips as the wind started blowing her hat off,
releasing the many stuffed strands of hair that had been under it. She looked
like Medusa as the glow of her flashlight highlighted the snakes of hair
surrounding her face.
The Author
Teresa Trent wasn't born in Texas but after a few glasses of sweet tea and some exceptional barbecue she decided to stay. With a father in the Army, she found herself moved all over the world, settling down for a while in her teens in the state of Colorado. Her writing was influenced by all of the interesting people she found in small towns and the sense of family that seemed to be woven through them all. Teresa is a former high school teacher and received her degree from The University of Northern Colorado. Teresa is presently working on the third book in her Pecan Bayou Series. Her second book, Overdue For Murder, came out in June of 2012.
Teresa Trent wasn't born in Texas but after a few glasses of sweet tea and some exceptional barbecue she decided to stay. With a father in the Army, she found herself moved all over the world, settling down for a while in her teens in the state of Colorado. Her writing was influenced by all of the interesting people she found in small towns and the sense of family that seemed to be woven through them all. Teresa is a former high school teacher and received her degree from The University of Northern Colorado. Teresa is presently working on the third book in her Pecan Bayou Series. Her second book, Overdue For Murder, came out in June of 2012.
Twitter:@ttrent_cozymys
Teresa, this book sounds like just my cup of tea (sorry for the pun) and my daughter would also enjoy it. I'll gift her a copy and hope I win one. If not, I'll buy it for sure. Best luck with your writing. I also have a disabled daughter, and my other is in education.
ReplyDeleteIt does sound like a fun book! Thank you for joining us today Teresa--I like that you showed us a bit of your personality during the interview. :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for your kind words Caroline. I always love running into another mom like me. I hope you enjoy the book!
ReplyDelete...and thanks for a great visit MK!
Based on the excerpt I know I will like the book
ReplyDeleteSounds great. Look forward to reading it. jtretin at aol dot com
ReplyDeleteThank you for hosting Teresa :)
ReplyDelete